ISSN 1364-3193 Mantis Study Group Newsletter 14 November 1999 Newsletter Editor Membership Secretary Phil Bragg Paul Taylor 8 The Lane 24 Forge Road Awsworth Shustoke Nottingham Coleshill NGl62QP Birmingham B46 2AD Editorial I would like to remind members that your membership subscriptions are due at the end of December. A renewal form should be enclosed with this newsletter. Prompt payment of subscriptions makes the work a lot easier for the membership secretary, so please pay as soon as possible. Once again can I ask people to write something for the newsletter!!! Drawings would also be welcome. Exhibitions Dates to note are: Sunday, 21st November 1999. West of England Creepy Crawly Show, Newton Abbot racecourse, Devon. Sunday, 5th December 1999. Midlands Entomological Fair. At Kettering Leisure Village. Open 1030-1630. Admission: £2.00 adults, £1.00 children and OAPs. The venue is just off junction 8 of the A14 and is usually well signposted. Sunday 16th April 2000. Midlands Entomological Fair. At Kettering Leisure Village. Food supplements - AIan Stubbs. I have been experimenting with "Royal Jelly and Honey" capsules (available from health food shops), which I can confirm as being beneficial to the development of nymphs of Phyllocrania paradoxa, as the specimens given gut-loaded crickets and blow flies develop faster and slightly larger than those fed without gut-loaded food. I am still trying with this food as I have not given it to nymphs regularly as I do not want them to grow too fast in case it is detrimental in any way. It does, however, make females prone to laying larger oothecae so it may be helpful if other people give it a go and write in to the Newsletter with their findings. Colour of mantids - Alan Stubbs. The question about colour change in green/brown mantids is almost certainly due to humidity. The wetter it is the more greenery there is, so more cover for green mantids. If the weather is hot and dry then mantids will find it more beneficial to blend in with more desiccated vegetation. If kept at a medium humidity then some will be green and some brown. But there are always a few stupid ones that like to stand out like a sore thumb! MSG Newsletter, 14: 1 Notes on the green flower mantis Creobroter sp. - Alan Stubbs. Species: Creobroter sp. (purchased as C. meleagris). Three females and one male were purchased on 28 th April 1998 at a cost of £6.00 each. The country of origin uncertain. They were 5th instar when purchased; all four were adult by 25 th May 1998. They were kept at 20-26°C at quite high humidity (sprayed twice daily). They were mated on 12th June 1998. The laying and hatching dates of ootheca were as follows: Laid Hatched 18 th June 1998 18 th July 1998 28 th June 1998 5th August 1998 10th July 1998 17 th August 1998 22 nd July 1998 23 rd August 1998 th 1sI August 1998 9 September 1998 This is a small green mantis (2.5-3cm long) with eyes set in such a way as to give the head a V-shape from the front. The abdomen of the nymph has a large eye-spot on the top. It is very stocky for a mantis and not at all perturbed by large prey. It is very active and aggressive, but not to its own species. The strike of this mantis is the fastest I have seen and for its small size is phenomenally strong. Hind wings are red and black but these fade quickly with age. The eye-spots on the abdomen of the nymph are also reproduced as a main feature of the forewings in the adult. The males flash their wings at the females prior to mating unless they approach from behind when they make the more undignified "frantic leap and hope for the best" approach. The females can attain a body shape so round as to stretch the imagination when well fed and it is worth bearing this in mind when trying to mate this species. I have found that they will stop taking food and when mating will tuck in again quite happily to any hapless victim offered, even though you would bet your mortgage that there was absolutely no possible room left. The males seem eager to mate and do not show the trepidation apparent in other species that I have kept. Females remain calm and at no time did I observe any sign of aggression towards the male. Copulation lasted 3 hours. The ootheca was laid on a twig. This species lays a long, slender oothecae and lays down the twig. This was seen all of the times eggs were laid. The ootheca was smooth to the eye and to touch (unlike Sphodromantis oothecae which tend to be a rough, dry foam texture), with the exit points clearly visible. These have absolutely no bearing on the number of hatchlings whatsoever as I had 42 nymphs hatch from all 5 of the oothecae produced (Yes, I did count everyone!!). To hatch the nymphs I broke the twig to the right length to put across a plastic cricket tub and fastened it to the sides with a couple of bits of Blue Tack. Then I got a clean bit of sponge (used for washing up) and cut that to the right size and put a couple of layers on the bottom to keep the humidity up (This has the benefit over Vermiculite of not going all over the place when transferring new nymphs to a net cylinder). Keep the temperature at 20-26°C and spray lightly with rain water twice a day and within 4-5 weeks you should have a cricket tub alive with prawn-pink nymphs with black eyes. Stunning! I have found that a 30cm by 45cm fine mesh cylinder is ideal for rearing mantis nymphs. You will need to put a few long twigs in it and again spray twice a day and preferably start feeding with small fruit flies, going on to larger ones after the second shed. I have kept nymphs in the same cage up to the fourth instar without any predation as they use the eye-spot on their abdomen to signal to each other. I have witnessed no cannibalism at all. When the nymphs were big enough I moved them into cricket tubs initially and then on to sweet jars. They were fed a mixture of blow flies (these were fed on honey and this seemed to make the nymphs more lively) and crickets (which were gut-loaded with Cricket Diet Plus). If anybody has any more information to offer with regard to husbandry, taxonomy, distribution or wild collection of any species then please write to either me or the newsletter and we may be able to put together a definitive guide to some of the more popular species of mantids. My own favourites are mimics of twigs, leaves, flowers, stones etc, so lots of notes about these if possible please. MSG Newsletter, 14: 2 Mantis abstracts The following are abstracts from papers published recently, or in some cases details of the paper but without an abstract. The papers are in English unless otherwise indicated. The editor would be grateful for copies of any recently published papers so that abstracts may be included in this section of the newsletters. Bullaro, M. & Prete, F. (1999) Thoracic and prothoracic leg neuromuscular system of the praying mantid, Sphodromantis lineola (Burmeister). Journal of Comparative Neurology, 409(2): 325-338. Historically, praying mantids have attracted attention because of their dramatic prey capture behaviour, loosely termed the strike. However, little is known about the neuromuscular organization that underpins the behaviour. Although once thought to be quite stereotyped, recent data indicate that the strike is quite plastic and can be aimed accurately within a relatively large three-dimensional space. Hence, successful prey capture requires the integration of (1) visual information, indicating prey has been recognized; and (2) proprioceptive information, indicating head and prothorax (i.e., visual field) position and initial leg positions. This study was undertaken as part of a larger program examining how such sensory information is integrated with the appropriate motor systems. Our goals were (1) to describe the gross thoracic and foreleg neuromuscular system of Sphodromantis lineola and (2) to identify the soma locations of the motor neurons associated with the largest leg nerve, N4, which travels the length of each leg. We found that the thoracic and foreleg neuromusculature of S. lineola are similar but not identical to what is known about just three other species of mantis, and that motor neuron somata associated with N4 are arranged in stereotypical, bilaterally symmetrical groups as they are in other orthopteroids, suggesting that this is a general organizational feature of the insect CNS. Hahn, B.-S., Cho, S. Y., Wu, S.J., Chang, I.-M., Baek, K., Kim, Y.c. & Kim, Y.S. (1999) Purification and characterization of a serine protease with fibrinolytic activity from Tenodera sinensis (praying mantis). Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 1430(2): 376-386. Mantis egg fibrolase (MEF) was purified from the egg cases of Tenodera sinensis using ammonium sulphate fractionation, gel filtration on Bio-Gel P-60 and affinity chromatography on DEAE Affi-Gel blue gel. The protease was assessed homogeneous by SDS­ polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and has a molecular mass of 31500Da. An isoelectric point of 6.1 was determined by isoelectric focusing. Amino acid sequencing of the N­ terminal region established a primary structure composed of Ala-Asp-Val-Val-Gln-Gly-Asp­ Ala-Pro-Ser.